Your Vogue history

Jean Paul Gaultier

POINTS were deducted from Jean Paul Gaultier for his couture show this afternoon because it ran a whole hour and a half late. Even huge projections of Karlie Kloss on the walls of 325 rue Saint-Martin couldn’t keep the fashion pack occupied for that amount of extra minutes. So it was lucky that the house was tweeting away and giving us snap shots of models Andrej Pejic and Willy Cartier pre-show to whet our appetite.

When things finally did get going, they really got going. If you’re looking for a show with drama on the catwalk, then you should look to Jean Paul Gaultier. It’s not always about a new designer at an established house, it’s about an established designer at his own house dancing to his own sartorial tune.

“It was risqué without being burlesque,” described Vogue fashion director Lucinda Chambers, referring to the fact that there was a lot of flesh (as you’d imagine), on show. Gaultier had also tapped into the Art Deco side of things with furry jackets and beaded flapper dresses alongside Cabaret-style top hats and tails.

Of course there were his signature sculptural corsets to give the most distinguished of curves to his cast of favourite models: the aforementioned Andrej Pejic and Erin O’Connor among them.